Hey community! This week we're talking about the unglamorous habit that quietly separates the event professionals who always have clients from the ones who ride a feast-and-famine rollercoaster - CONSISTENCY - Part 1. Specifically, consistency in how you reach out to new prospects and how you follow up with the ones you've already contacted. Here's a pattern I've seen for 30 years. A planner finishes a big event, realizes the calendar ahead is thin, and goes into outreach mode. For two weeks they're sending messages, making calls, and reconnecting with contacts. Then a new client lands. The work takes over. Outreach stops. Six months later, the calendar is thin again, and the cycle repeats. It isn't a talent problem. It isn't even a time problem. It's a system problem. This week I'm showing you how to build an outreach and follow-up rhythm that runs steadily in the background, and how AI makes it light enough to sustain even in your busiest weeks. 1. WHY INCONSISTENCY IS THE MOST EXPENSIVE HABIT IN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Think about how a corporate client actually decides to hire an event professional. They rarely decide the first time they hear from you. They're busy. They have budget cycles, internal approvals, and a dozen competing priorities. The event you're pitching may not be on their radar for another six months or longer. So the first message often lands at the wrong time. The second message lands when they're in a meeting. The third arrives the same week their needs become real, and suddenly you're the one they think of, because you've been quietly present the whole time. The professional who sends one message and stops never gets to that third touchpoint. The competitor who stays consistently visible does. Most leads aren't lost. They're abandoned. And the cost of abandoning them is invisible, because you never find out which ones were about to say yes. 2. WHY FOLLOW-UP FAILS (AND IT'S ALMOST NEVER ABOUT SKILL) Ask event professionals why they don't follow up more, and the answers are remarkably consistent:

Context: You have a growing to-do list, and you know exactly who could take half of it off your plate. But you keep telling yourself it’s faster to just do it yourself. Nobody else will catch the details the way you do, and explaining it would take longer than finishing it. (This is me - ha! Something I need to work on) What happens: You make the mistake of treating “no one can do it as well as I can” as a fact instead of a story. You hold onto tasks that don’t need your skills, and your days fill up with work that keeps the business running instead of work that moves it forward. Meanwhile, the strategic thinking, relationship-building, and big-picture decisions only you can make keep getting pushed to “when things slow down.” They never do. You become the bottleneck in your own business, and the people who could have grown into the work never get the chance. Burnout shows up, growth stalls, and the thing you built to give you freedom starts to feel like a cage. What to do differently: Ask: is this the best use of my time, or just the most comfortable one? Start by handing off tasks that are repeatable, time-consuming, and don’t require your unique expertise. Document the process once, set clear expectations, and accept that “85% as good as you” done by someone else is often a better deal than 100% done by you at the cost of everything else. Give feedback instead of taking the work back. Delegating is a skill, and the first few handoffs will be messy. Each one frees up time to focus on what only you can do. 🔥 Takeaway for you: Doing it all yourself isn’t dedication, it’s a ceiling. Let go of the tasks that keep you busy so you can focus on the ones that make you valuable. Your business can only grow as far as you’re willing to share the load.

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The Moment: Someone sends you a message that was clearly designed to get a rise out of you. You have a response typed out in seconds, sharp, justified, and ready to send. Instead, you close the laptop and walk away. By the next morning, the issue had either resolved itself or turned out to be far smaller than it felt in the moment. The reply you almost sent would have only made it bigger. The Lesson: A reaction is a decision to give something your energy, and not everything earns that. Most of what triggers us is noise: a passive-aggressive email, a critical comment, someone else’s drama or poor planning. Responding immediately hands control of your emotions and your time to the other person. Silence isn’t weakness or avoidance. It’s choosing the moment, the tone, and whether to engage at all. 🔥 Why it Matters: In business and in life, the people who stay steady are the ones who learn to pause. Every reactive reply costs you focus, peace, and sometimes a relationship you’ll wish you’d protected. When you stop feeding what doesn’t deserve your attention, you save your energy for the battles that actually matter. Pause first, then decide if it’s worth a response. Most of the time, it isn’t.

1. WHAT YOUR BIG ROCKS LOOK LIKE IN THE EVENTS AND HOSPITALITY BUSINESS Let me make this specific to our world — because "focus on what matters" is generic advice. The big rocks in the hospitality and events business are particular, and naming them helps. YOUR BIG ROCKS ARE MOST LIKELY: REVENUE AND CLIENT GROWTH • Following up on a proposal that's been out for more than five days • Making a direct outreach call to a potential new client or referral source • Preparing for and conducting a discovery call with a new prospect • Submitting an RFP or responding to a sourcing opportunity • Asking a satisfied client directly for a referral or testimonial STRATEGIC RELATIONSHIPS • A lunch, call, or coffee with a key hotel partner, DMC contact, or industry peer • A meaningful LinkedIn engagement with a target client or referral source • A check-in with an existing client between events — not for business, just for relationship • A conversation with a mentor, peer, or more experienced professional BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT • Writing and publishing your weekly LinkedIn post • Creating a new piece of community content for your Skool members • Building a new service offering or refining an existing one • Developing a new AI prompt or SOP that improves your delivery • Working on a proposal, pitch deck, or capability document PROFESSIONAL GROWTH • Learning a new AI application and practising it on a real task • Reading an industry report or attending a webinar in your focus area • Reflecting on a recent event and documenting what you'd do differently None of these are urgent in the traditional sense. None of them have a deadline that fires an alarm. But every single one of them is quietly determining what your business looks like twelve months from now. 2. BUILDING THE BIG ROCKS HABIT — MAKING IT YOUR DEFAULT, NOT YOUR INTENTION The goal of everything we've covered these last few weeks is not to have one great, focused week. It's to build the habit of big rocks first so deeply into your professional routine that it becomes your default — not something you have to fight for every Monday morning. That takes approximately 30 days of consistent practice. It feels uncomfortable for the first two weeks. It starts to feel natural in week three. By week four you notice the difference in what you're producing.